II
This is what actually happened, towards midnight of that very day, within a stone’s-throw of Claridge’s Hotel, in Brook Street, Mayfair. George Tarlyon and I had been of the same company for dinner and then bridge at a house in Brook Street. Towards midnight a gap in the bridge allowed us to slip away, which we did. Tarlyon had parked his car outside Claridge’s, and thither we walked.
Now Brook Street at that hour is undecided between a state of coma and one of glittering abandon; which means that the deathly silence is every now and then shattered by rich automobiles hurling themselves and lovely ladies all covered in pearls and chrysoprase into the bosom of Grosvenor Square. Claridge’s, of course, has music, so that youth may dance. But of pedestrians along Brook Street there are less than a few ... and of young men in gents’ evening wear running furiously after limousines there is a noticeable scarcity. He simply tore past us, that young man, in the middle of the road, a few yards behind a swiftly going car. The car stopped towards Grosvenor Square, and somehow the young man seemed to disappear. We were more than fifty yards away, and could not determine whether it was a man or a woman who emerged from the car and entered the house, but it looked like a fat little man. Then the car slid away. The pursuing young man had disappeared.
“He can’t have been doing it for fun,” said Tarlyon.
“Perhaps he’s gone to have a bath,” I suggested. For it was a very warm night, and running after motor-cars must have been a wet business.
“We’ll see,” said Tarlyon. We retraced our steps up Brook Street, and passed the house into which the occupant of the car had disappeared. It was a house like another, dark and silent; and as it stood almost at the corner we went round the corner into Grosvenor Square; at least, we were rounding the corner when a young man in a great hurry collided into us.
“Ah!” said Tarlyon.
“Sorry,” said the stranger. I was right about the running—it had made his face very wet.
“So it’s you!” said Tarlyon.
“Good-evening, gentlemen,” said the Armenian, with a sort of furious courtesy. “If you will excuse me, I am in a hurry.” He made to pass us.
“We noticed it,” said Tarlyon. “In fact, we noticed nothing else.”
“Damn!” snapped the Armenian. “So you saw me running?”
“So did he,” I murmured, looking up Brook Street. A policeman was sauntering towards us.
“If you don’t want to be asked any questions by the arm of the law,” Tarlyon suggested, “you had better take a turn round the square with us.”
“I won’t move,” the stranger muttered passionately. “I have found him at last—I won’t move.”
“But neither will he,” I soothed him. “He’s gone into the house....”
“Did you see him go in?”
“Ah, but His Excellency is clever!” said the Armenian viciously.
We grabbed hold of him and hauled him round the square.
“Now,” said Tarlyon, “what’s all this Excellency nonsense?”
“He doesn’t think it’s nonsense,” the young man muttered grimly.
“Look here,” I said, “either this is a plot or it is not a plot. In either case you’ll look rather an idiot, so——”
“You’d better confide in us,” Tarlyon finished. “We, being English, have great sympathy with oppressed peoples——”
“I have noticed it,” said the Armenian grimly. He was obviously a well-educated young man.
We had him walking between us, and he never even pretended that he liked our company.
“I suppose,” said Tarlyon cattishly, “you’ve got bombs all over you.”
“Sir!” snapped the Armenian.
“Sir to you,” said Tarlyon.
“I was merely going to say,” said the Armenian, “that in my opinion you are a fool. Do I look the kind of man to carry bombs? I favour the revolver.”
“Oh, do you?” said I. Sarcastic I was, you understand.
He looked at me with those large, devilish eyes.
“And one shot,” he said gently, “is always enough....”
I gave up.
“And where,” asked Tarlyon reasonably, “does His Excellency come in?”
“He won’t come in anywhere after to-night. His Excellency is going to die. And with that the Armenian suddenly stopped in his unwilling stride, and looked from one to the other of us. His broken nose made fantasy of his dark face, but I remember thinking that it must once have been a handsome enough face of its kind, for not even a broken nose made him quite ugly. He was as tall as Tarlyon, but slighter; his was a dangerous thinness. He addressed Tarlyon. He did not seem to have a very high opinion of me.
“Sir,” he said—an Armenian habit, I suppose, that “sir”—“you have intruded your company on me, but I have accepted you. I have trusted you. I have treated you as gentlemen, being by nature an optimist, and I take it for granted that you will neither betray me nor try to deter me. You will understand the vigour of my purpose when I say that a young girl is concerned in this, that I have sworn a vow, and that if you were in my position you would do what I am going to do. Good-night, gentlemen. I hope we will meet again when I am less occupied with more important business.”
“Hold on,” cried Tarlyon. “What on earth were you chasing that car for? And who the devil is His Excellency? We’d like to know, you see, so as to be able to pick him out from among the other murders in to-morrow’s papers.”
“Achmed Jzzit Pasha, the Young Turk,” said the Armenian softly.
“Ah!” said George Tarlyon. “I see. Enver Pasha, Djemal Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Achmed Jzzit Pasha, of the Committee of Union and Progress. I see. Talaat Pasha has already been killed, hasn’t he?”
“Four of us,” said the Armenian sombrely, “set out from Armenia last year, and each of us had a mission of revenge. One of us—you will remember?—shot and killed Talaat Pasha in a street in Berlin some months ago. Djemal Pasha was lately slain in Syria. Enver Pasha has fled to Bokhara. A murder has been arranged and will shortly take place in Bokhara. And I, the fourth, have at last found Achmed Jzzit, the foulest murderer of all. There is not an Armenian in the world who would not shoot Achmed Jzzit Pasha on sight if he had the chance—but Armenians who come to Western countries only too soon acquire nasty Western habits of money-grubbing and forget the glory there is in killing. But I, a Zeytounli, have never forgotten it....”
“You speak English very well,” I remarked. “Were you educated at an English public-school?”
“That, sir, is a matter of opinion. But even an English public-school could not make me forget that I am an Armenian, and that an Armenian’s first business is to kill Turks; failing Turks, he may, of course, kill Kurds or ravish Circassian maidens——”
“Oh, not Circassians!” I pleaded.
“Well, Albanian,” he allowed. “During the war I fought through the siege of Zeytoun, and then as an irregular under Andranik; and since the war I have pursued Achmed Jzzit Pasha—and to-night I have found him! He has been here in London for some months, but under an assumed name, for he knows that he is marked by the Dashnakists[A] and the Henchakists,[A] and he is afraid. It is my present business to cure him of his fear for ever.” And with a wrench his arms were free of our gently restraining hands and he was off down the square. But Tarlyon was swift, very swift; I panted up just as he was again “intruding himself” on the Armenian.
“You don’t seem to realise,” breathed Tarlyon, “that you can’t enter a house in Brook Street, kill a Pasha, and get away——”
“I don’t care if I get away or not,” the other broke in fiercely. “Besides, my friend who killed Talaat in Berlin was acquitted. And I cannot believe that your English juries are as thick-headed as you would have me think. So will you please excuse me, sir?”
It was marvellous what venom that broken-nosed young man could put into a simple question!
“I’ve taken rather a fancy to you,” murmured Tarlyon, “and I hate to think of your going off murdering Pashas. Come and have a drink instead, there’s a good fellow.”
“If I tell you,” snapped the Armenian, “that there is a girl in that house, and that I must rescue that girl, then you will perhaps see your way to minding your own business.”
“Has the Pasha got your girl?” I asked kindly.
“She is my sister, O fool,” he said wearily. “And do you think I can allow my little sister to stay in that loathsome old creature’s house one night more than I can help?”
“Collar him,” said Tarlyon to me; and I grabbed the young man’s other arm, though I didn’t in the least want to, and again we began hauling him round the square. As I walked close to him I could feel a solid bulky thing in his hip-pocket, and I did not like the feeling.
“Now,” said Tarlyon, very business-like, “what’s all this about your sister?”
The Armenian almost screamed with impatience.
“Have I not told you all along that if you were in my position you would do exactly what I am going to do? Must I explain to you that my little sister was carried away by that old lecher before my eyes? Must I tell you how Zeytoun on the hill was at last shelled to dust by the batteries of two Army Corps under Achmed Jzzit Pasha, and how the Turks entered the smoking town and gave no quarter to man, woman or child? Must I, just to satisfy your wanton and asinine curiosity, ravage my heart with retailing how my father and mother were bayoneted before my eyes, and how I escaped only because those Turkish swine thought me already dead? Must I tell you how my little sister was carried away to the harem of Achmed Jzzit Pasha, who, on beholding her, swore a mighty swear that he would not rest from disembowelling Christians until he had ravished her? Did she give way? The slaying went on, day by day and night by night, so that a count of the leaves of the trees in your puny but not unattractive Green Park would make but a fraction of the number of the dead bodies that to this day lie rotting in the plain of Mush. An expert killer was Achmed Jzzit Pasha; and whether or not the natural blood-lust of the illiterate Osmanli was heightened by his oath to ravish my sister I do not know, but I do know that there has not been such a tale of dead Christians since Timur passed through the land to meet Bajazet. And that is the man who holds my sister in that house, while you detain me here with the vain questions and idiotic comments peculiar to the high-minded people of your patrician land. I followed him to Paris, but he escaped me. I found him in Bournemouth, but again I withheld my hand while I planned some way of rescuing Anaïs—fool that I was! But the idea in my head was that I must first get the girl to some place of safety—and then to come back, slay him, and pay whatever is the penalty in your country for killing a loathsome animal. But now I have realised that there is no other way of rescuing Anaïs but by killing him first. Always, wherever he goes, he keeps her locked in a room next to his, and thus it must be in this house. Bestial fancies seethe in his brain, wherefore he sleeps lightly. And while the night is dwindling, here I stand satisfying your idle curiosity. You really must excuse me now, gentlemen.”
“But hold on!” cried Tarlyon. “Why kill the wretched man at all? Why not rescue your sister with the charming name and let the Pasha go on being a Pasha until he dies a horrible death by reason of those bestial fancies which you mentioned? He won’t dare come after her—and I don’t see much point in getting your sister back if you have got to swing for it more or less at once. Eh, Ralph?”
“Quite right,” said I. “Come and have a drink instead.”
“This is no time for drink,” snapped the Armenian. “The night is dwindling—and how can I desist from killing him when, as I have told you, I cannot get into her room without awaking him? And it stands to reason that as soon as I see him I shall also see red, and kill—as I must, by reason of my vow and by order of the Dashnakists. As I have told you, I would have preferred to have got Anaïs out of the house first, but that seems impossible....”
Tarlyon opened his mouth and closed it. I knew what was passing in Tarlyon’s mind, and I thought I would let it pass, so that he might think again. But then he re-opened his mouth, and this is what he said:
“My friend and I,” he said, “might perhaps consider giving you a little assistance, if in return you gave us a promise——”
“I promise nothing!”
“Drat the boy!” said Tarlyon. “What I wish to point out is that, if my friend and I help you to get your sister out of that house, you must drop this killing business. We will contrive some way of keeping His Excellency quiet while you rescue your sister—but you must give us your word of honour, or some efficient substitute, that you will not come back and murder the wretched Pasha. Now, I want no back-chat about it—either you will or you will not.”
“But I am bound to the Dashnakists!” cried the Armenian; rather regretfully, I thought.
“Blast the Dashnakists!” said Tarlyon. “Yes or no?”
“I promise,” said the Armenian suddenly.
My native common sense now got the better of me.
“You seem to take it for granted that we just walk into the house. How do we get in?”
“This cuts windows like a knife,” said the Armenian, showing us in the palm of his hands a glittering little thing like a toy dagger. “An Argentine invention.”
“The matter will be further facilitated,” said Tarlyon, “by our first getting my car, which is opposite Claridge’s, and driving in it to the front door. My reason for this step is that no policeman would dare suspect anything wrong in a house while a Rolls-Royce is standing outside it. Especially, Ralph, when your manly appearance is decorating the driving-seat....”
“I shall be in the house,” I said firmly. Not that I wanted to be—but one always says those things, and one always says them firmly.
“Perhaps that would be better,” said the Armenian. “It will certainly take the two of you to keep His Excellency quiet while I break in the first locked door I see and get Anaïs. And a Rolls-Royce car is, I understand, even more impressive empty than when some one is in it—people make it seem possible.”